Friday, September 4, 2009

Le Mans Series 1000KM of Silverstone Preview

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© Planetlemans - Gabriel Portos

The Le Mans Series will be in action at Silverstone again next weekend, for the fifth time in its six years of running. It also indicates the end of the season already, five race weekends having flown by in what only seems a blink of an eye.

A seven points lead over Pescarolo Sport means the Aston Martin Racing team can clinch the 2009 titles on home soil, but everyone remembers last year’s battle between Audi and Peugeot. It is not over before the flag is shown. Aston Martin Racing will however do whatever possible, bringing three cars to Silverstone again to maximize their chances of winning all the titles.

Returning after skipping the Nurburgring round is the Team Oreca Matmut AIM squad, however the French team will only bring one car to the United Kingdom, the other one being prepared for the US trip later this month.

In LMP2 we will witness the return of the WF01-Zytek, being run by Team WFR. Team WFR will have many familiar faces as they are in fact the reborn Embassy Racing squad. Warren Hughes and Darren Manning will be joined by the team’s former team manager, Jody Firth, who has so far raced in Ginetta’s this season and will now step up to the prototype ranks. Another British squad, RML, hopes to end the season on a high, after suffering engine failures all season long.

The final Le Mans Series round of 2009 will – most likely - also see the final battle between Corvette, Saleen and Aston Martin in an international series on European soil. The Aston Martin DBR9 of Gigawave Motorsport, driven by none other than Peter Kox and Ryan Sharp, will face the Larbre Competition Saleen and the Luc Alphand Aventures Corvette (although the presence of the team is not yet certain after one of their cars was destroyed in a fire earlier this week).

After a strong performance was finally rewarded at the Nurburgring the SNORAS Spyker Squadron team is hoping for another great weekend at Silverstone, but with fourteen cars taking part in the GT2 class it will not be an easy task. Team Modena, JMW Motorsport as well the Felbermayr-Proton and Farnbacher Racing entered GT2 cars will all be chasing podium positions.

Shortly after the Silverstone race has come to an end several teams will be packing up quickly to get back to their work shops and prepare their cars and equipment for either the final American Le Mans Series rounds or even a trip to Japan for the Asian Le Mans Series at Okayama.

But first…off to Silverstone for the Autosport 1000 KM of Silverstone and a cracking end of the current Le Mans Series season.

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